The Paris Wife

By Paula McLain

New York, Ballantine Books, 2011

336 pages     Fiction

Read on my Kindle

Like many of the literati of their generation, Ernest Hemingway and his new bride, Hadley, took off for Paris in 1921 to begin their lives together. They lived on a small inheritance from her family until Hemingway got on his feet as a writer; they traveled to Spain and Austria, had a baby son, met up with Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald, Ezra Pound, Archibald McLeish, Gertrude Stein and all the famous authors and poets of the day. But the marriage was not to last, and they were divorced within five years. The Paris Wife by Paula McLain is the novelized version of their marriage.

The story is told by Hadley, who was a virtual “spinster” of 28 when she married the younger Hemingway. He brought her to life, transporting her to a much more exciting and rewarding life than she would have had if she had remained in St. Louis. She was his sounding board and his stability, and according to his memoir, A Movable Feast, the love of his life, although he was married three more times. Of her he says, “I wished I had died before I loved anyone but her.”

It is difficult to know where the facts end and the fiction begins. Because The Paris Wife reads like a memoir, the reader has to keep reminding herself that this is fiction. I found Hadley, at least according to McLain, to be a very interesting character primarily because Ernest takes a back seat in this novel. This is the opposite of everything we know about Hemingway, who was a “larger than life” character in his own life story. The Hadley of The Paris Wife is complex and a keen observer of the lives of the expatriates the Hemingway’s encounter during those Paris years. She was much more down-to-earth and practical than most of the other wives and lovers. Although she seems able to party with the best of them, she remains true and supportive of Hemingway until the bitter end of their marriage. 

Hadley seems to understand that the life she experienced as the wife of Ernest Hemingway was a far more stimulating life than any other life she could have had, and that living among the rich and famous in the Paris of the 1920s was at once magical and destructive. She says, “We called Paris the great good place, then, and it was. We invented it after all. We made it with smoke and smart and savage conversation and we dared anyone to say it wasn’t ours. Together we made everything and then we busted it apart again.”

In an article in the Chicago Tribune, Hadley’s biographer Gioia Diliberto discusses how she found source material for her biography in some audio tapes supplied her by Hadley’s long-time friend. She says, “I expected Hadley, who died in 1979, to be bitter toward Hemingway; instead, on the tapes she is full of gratitude to him for giving her "the key to the world." She suggests that Ernest “was the first person to see deeply into her true nature, and in a rueful irony, he helped her find the strong sense of self that sustained her through their break-up.” 

I think I can understand that. My first husband, who died at a young age, was an exciting and colorful person, full of humor and love for people. I, on the other hand, took myself far too seriously and was a bit self-righteous and straight-laced. Lee gave me “the key to the world” and opened me up to experience life in ways I never would have if I hadn’t met him and learned from him.

One of the New York Times reviewers pretty much skewered the book, from the cover which looked way more 1950s than 1920s to the slow first third of the novel, to what the reviewer calls “clumsy foreshadowing,” to the blaze of righteous indignation the reader feels when Hadley gets dumped for the stylish Pauline. While I understood what the reviewer was saying, I felt differently about Hadley and The Paris Wife. I thought that McLain created Hadley to be a person who evolved into a strong and interesting person, one who could withstand the dangers of the Paris scene of the 1920s even as she was the backbone for the great writer Ernest Hemingway was to become.

The nasty review in the New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/28/books/28book.html

The biography by Gioia Diliberto: Paris Without End: The True Story of Hemingway’s First Wife, Harper Perennial, 2011. Her article in the Chicago Tribune: http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2009-07-12/news/0907090333_1_hadley-richardson-ernest-hemingway-moveable-feast

An interview with Paula McLain at the Hemingway Project.com: http://www.thehemingwayproject.com/2010/04/interview-with-paula-mclain-author-of.html

The Last Blind Date

by Linda Yellin
New York, Gallery Books, 2011
318 pages     Memoir

Finally! A happy memoir! No abuse, no dysfunctional parents, no rising above adversity!

Linda Yellin tells the story of loss, love and life in her amusing, but thoughtful memoir, The Last Blind Date. This is a book for any woman looking for love in middle age or looking for love following death or divorce. This is a book for anyone needing a good laugh. This is for anyone looking for an uplifting story. This is for anyone.

Although she was divorced from her first husband, she stayed with him as he was dying from cancer. Following his death, Yellin fell into a funk, which included a disastrous, but very funny dating scene. She outlines briefly the major failings of the men she was meeting and dating; the fixups, the blind dates, the “Bozos!” Then,she was introduced, via telephone, to recently divorced Randy, who lived in New York City, while she lived in Chicago. They began a slow courtship that included weekend trips, visits to parents, introductions to Randy’s two young children, and protestations from Randy that getting married was not part of his 5-year-plan. 

More than half of the book occurs following their marriage. Yellin would not move to New York without being married. When she tells a Chicago cab driver that she is flying home to New York, early in the marriage, he asks her how long she has lived there. (We already know that she sounds like a Midwesterner because of a very funny section on trying to lose a Midwestern accent.) She tells him that she has lived there for two months because she got married. He looks her over and remarks, “And you couldn’t find a guy in Chicago?”

She tells of the difficulty of adapting to work in New York, following a successful Chicago advertising career; adapting to marriage again; adapting to life in New York City; and adapting to being the step-mother to two children. She calls them the “stepfruit-of-my-loins as she overthinks every aspect of her relationship with them. Luckily, Randy is a laid-back husband and father, and life smoothes out over time. 

The best part of Linda Yellin’s memoir writing style is that she doesn’t take herself too seriously. She looks at the things that happen to her with both understanding and humor. It doesn’t hurt at all that Randy approaches life with the same strengths. Additionally, the humor comes naturally. There is nothing forced; she doesn't have to keep telling herself, "I need to add a zinger right here." The power of her humor comes from the way in which she views life, with a healthy respect for the irony present in most situations.

One of my favorite chapters is about a trip to get her eyebrows waxed by a stylist, which is going to “change her life.” When she returns home after this amazing experience, she approaches Randy in a totally New York outfit with totally New York eyebrows. He is hard at work fixing a small appliance. She says, “Honey, do I look different?” He hardly looks up and responds, “You look great!”  “Regular great or different great?” “Always great! Do you mind stepping out of the way? You’re standing in my light.” Yellin’s thoughts at that moment: “My life hadn’t changed because of reshaped brows…and it hadn’t changed thanks to new clothes. My life changed when I married a man who looked at me, really looked at me, and still considered me beautiful.”

One blog reviewer mentioned that The Last Blind Date restored her faith in memoirs. “I have found only a very few authors who have been able to write with enough objectivity while maintaining their own humanity that I have become a believer in some memoirs. This is one of them. (The other is The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls).” I too loved The Glass Castle. But I could also recommend Mennonite in a Little Black Dress by Rhoda Janzen and Working It Out by Abby Rike, although Working it Out is a much darker memoir. When you consider The Last Blind Date, think Sleepless in Seattle.

I met my husband when I was in my mid-fifties. Frankly, I had given up on dating—it was just too depressing. This was a blind date set up by a mutual friend. My New York daughter-in-law dressed me for the experience; I was so nervous I thought I was going to die, because somehow I knew that this time it was going to be different. As I approached the restaurant, I called my Mommy for support. She said, “Miriam, you’re a lovely person. He is going to like you. Everything will be fine.” And it was.

My step-daughter is involved in a London-Boston romance with a man with two children. She is leaving for the holidays to be with him in London. He visited her in Boston last month. This book is definitely for her to let her know that all things are possible. 

A good blog review http://amusingreviews.blogspot.com/2011/10/last-blind-date-by-linda-yellin.html

An interview on Chicago TV station, WGN: http://www.wgntv.com/videogallery/65543237/News/Author-Linda-Yellin-The-Last-Blind-Date

Linda Yellin’s website: http://lindayellin.com

Unclean Spirit: The Black Sun's Daughter Series

By M.L.N. Hanover

New York, Pocket Books, 2009

400 pages     Fiction

The Shortlist

Today, I introduce my son-in-law Isa Ford as a guest blogger. When I was sent the Black Sun’s Daughter series, (4 books currently—the fifth book is forthcoming), I was at a bit of a loss. I was committed to reading another fantasy series, and I am a bit of a novice with the concept of urban fantasy (Does it qualify that I saw the movie, Sin City?), so I passed this series on to Isa, who reads a lot of fantasy. Here is his take on book one of the series: Unclean Spirit.

Jayné Heller is the heir of a massive fortune that she never knew about, which was left to her by an uncle that she thought she knew. She is thrown together with a group of over protective men to find her uncle’s killer. She is told that her uncle was killed by a demon possessed man and that monsters and magic are real. If she wants revenge, she must expect that the world is bigger than she ever imagined. The only way to kill a monster is with magic. So her only option is to start believing in magic or die.

Unclean Spirit is a good introduction into a world that has a unique way of looking at the supernatural, while having the basic concepts expected in this genre. There were some slow points and it was a little predictable when it came to the interpersonal relationships of all the characters. The main character is written in a way that makes me want to follow her as she progresses into the role of urban hero.

Now back to me. M.L.N. Hanover is the pen name for the fantasist Daniel Abraham, the author of the Long Price Quartet Series. On his website, Abraham defines urban fantasy as a combination of horror, mystery, romance, and science fiction. “Urban Fantasy doesn’t take its power from having roots in other genres.  It didn’t bloom into one of the most important areas in publishing because it was horror or romance or mystery.  It took root because the story it’s telling matters to us, and it’s a story that wasn’t getting told elsewhere.  So, in fact, urban fantasy exists as a genre because it’s not horror and not romance and not mystery.  It gives us something else, and it’s something we as a culture are hungry for.” Reviewers commented that the Black Sun's Daughter series is so very different from Abraham's other writings, that his signature style is barely identifiable--thus the pen name.

The four books currently out in the Black Sun’s Daughter series include: Unclean Spirits, Darker Angels, Vicious Grace, and Killing Rites. Book 5 comes out in the summer. Some reviewers complained that the introductory book was just that—introductory. But now that the series has four books, reviewers recommended moving right on to the second book where the action picks up.

Daniel Abraham’s website: http://www.danielabraham.com

 An interview with Daniel Abraham: http://www.sfsignal.com/archives/2009/12/interview-daniel-abraham/

Lethal

By Sandra Brown

New York, Grand Central, 2011

472 pages     Fiction

Sandra Brown has written over 60 novels, romances, mysteries, and thrillers. The Denver Post calls Lethal, her latest book “romantic suspense.” They also say that it is a “Hitchcockian thriller that reads like a bullet.” 

Honor Gillette and her young daughter Emily have been living a quiet life in the country near Tambour, Louisiana. Her husband, Eddie, a police officer, was killed in a car accident two years before. Honor and Emily’s lives are shattered when they meet up with Lee Coburn, a deeply undercover FBI agent. Accused of killing 7 people in a warehouse massacre, he is on the run, and Honor and Emily become his unwilling accomplices. Coburn is trying to find “The Bookkeeper” who orchestrated the massacre, and Honor is trying to figure out how to protect the reputation of her husband, whose car accident may not have been accidental. 

Lethal is suspense writing at its very best. The set-up is chilling; the collateral damage is spectacular, and the plot deceptive and clever.  The characters are all believable with Coburn and Honor being the most developed. The tension between them is palpable, but the romance takes a back seat to the pressure of the plot. Just when you think you have something figured out, Brown throws a curve ball or a cliff-hanger, and the reader is left gasping. Nothing is as it seems.

My favorite spot in a mystery or suspense novel is when you can’t stop reading; whether it is 10 in the morning or midnight. I reached that point in Lethal last evening about 11:30. I forced myself to go to sleep only to toss and turn all night. When I got up this morning, I said to my husband that I couldn’t do anything else until I finished this book. Early in my reading this morning, I figured out who the Bookkeeper was, but I still had to wade through several more murders and plot twists until my suspicions are confirmed. AHA, I thought, I knew it all along, but truthfully, I wasn’t sure. Don’t you just love books like that!

I particularly like the character development of Coburn and Honor. Frequently in mysteries or suspense novels, character development gets lost in plot development, and we end up knowing very little about the characters. In Lethal, we actually get to see the characters change and make decisions based on emotional growth rather than the machinations of the plot developer. Kudos to Brown for that.

It is amazing and fun to see the role that cell phones play in the plot. They are crucial to the outcome of the novel. In her blog, Brown mentions the difficulties she had in using cell phones as plot devices—the technology was changing faster than she could write. She says, “. . .just when I think I’ve got it figured out, someone on “CSI” or “Castle” says something about the bad guy’s “burner” and I’ve got to go look that up.  (For you equally untutored, a burner is a disposable phone that can be bought at several outlets, including your local supermarket.  In my store, the display is between produce and paper products.  And, yes, I bought one for “research” — and felt like a drug dealer.)  There was a time when a cell phone couldn’t be tracked unless it was turned on.  Which seems like the good old days, except that it was only about a month ago.  Now, my phone guru tells me that “If I have the phone number, even if the phone is turned off, so long as there’s a battery in it, I can track it, tap into it, and gain total access.”  If he weren’t such a good guy, I’d be very worried.  The point is, the technology is there for your cell phone – your life – to be an open book  (No pun intended.)  It’s scary… And it’s HELL on a fiction writer.” 

It is with some chagrin that I have to mention that it is been a very long time since I have read a Sandra Brown novel…several years as a matter of fact. I used to only read mysteries and suspense novels; there was even a time that I only read English parlor murder mysteries. I had to teach myself to read literary fiction. It was great fun to return to this genre. I have three more mysteries on my “to read” shelf. I will have to force myself to move on to the other genres.

 I want to thank the publicists for sending Lethal to me. I will pass it on to my sister, who loves suspense novels.

 Here is the review in the Denver Post: http://www.denverpost.com/books/ci_18931131

Sandra Brown’s very colorful website:  http://sandrabrown.net/